E-bikes
I bought an e-bike in 2025 when I came back to UVA. It’s my favorite physical item in my possession. I’m more evangelical about e-bikes than the most annoying vegan crossfitter you know. I get a lot of the same questions whenever I’m out proselytizing about these machines. Credit where it’s due: my UVA SDS colleague YY Ahn maintains a terrific e-bike wiki page that inspired some of these points.
Q: But e-bikes are expensive!
A: A good e-bike runs $800 to $2,000. In 2025, the average new car costs $11,577 per year to own and operate, about $965 a month, once you add up depreciation ($4,334), financing ($1,131), insurance ($1,694), fuel (about $1,950), and maintenance. An e-bike costs a few pennies per charge and maybe $200 a year in upkeep, less if you can take 10 minutes to watch a YouTube video on bleeding brakes, changing tires, etc. Two months of car ownership buys the bike outright.
Q: Isn’t riding an e-bike cheating?
A: The motor assists your pedaling, and you still work, if you want. You can make it a workout if you turn the assist down. Or not at all if you turn the assist to max or use a throttle. Your choice. A study of transport users in seven European cities found e-bikers get about as much physical activity as regular cyclists because they ride more often and farther.
Q: I’m too old / too out of shape for this.
A: Doesn’t matter. The assist scales to whatever your legs have that day. Start at max and let the motor do nearly everything, then dial it down as you get stronger. If you have a throttle you don’t even need to pedal.
Q: My trips are too long for a bike.
A: Some are. Most aren’t: 52% of all US trips are under three miles, and 28% are under one mile. 3 miles takes about 10 minutes on an e-bike, no sweat on arrival. Replacing half your car trips is plenty.
Q: Isn’t driving faster?
A: Across town, usually not once you count parking. I ride door to door and lock up next to the building I’m walking into. It’s 5.5 minutes from my house to my office, 7 to any establishment on our Downtown Mall. A driver parks in a garage or circles the block, then walks. At UVA a parking permit runs ~$1,000/year, and the garage still isn’t near your office for many people. For trips under a few miles the bike wins.
Q: Why not a regular bike?
A: If you already ride one, keep going. The motor removes the excuses that keep regular bikes parked. Hills don’t matter. You won’t sweat everywhere. A load of groceries or whatever on your basket doesn’t slow you down.
Q: What about winter?
A: Get some warm clothes! Dress like you’re going sledding. I use handlebar mitts, which are like giant gloves mounted on the handlebars that you slip your hands into. When it’s really cold I’ll wear a balaclava. I also have a $5 pair of ski goggles I use when it’s super cold. If it’s snowing out that’ll make biking dangerous, but the same is true for driving.
Q: What about rain?
A: You’ll ride in bad rain once a month at most. Get a rain jacket, rain pants, and shoe covers. You don’t need North Face or something fancy.
Q: Isn’t it dangerous riding with cars?
A: The route you’d bike might not be the route you drive, and low-traffic streets connect more of your town than you’d guess. What makes biking dangerous is going much slower than cars. On my class 3 e-bike I can go 28 mph before the assist kicks off, making it easy to keep up with traffic. When it’s congested I can easily pass more cars than cars pass me. Keep your brakes maintained, and wear a helmet. The health benefit accumulates over years of riding. The per-ride risk is low.
Q: What about riding at night?
A: Most e-bikes come with lights wired into the main battery, so they’re always charged and you can’t forget them at home. I mount an extra headlight onto mine for night riding. My Lectric XP4 also has brake lights and turn signals. I wear a high-visibility jacket, like this one, made from the same reflective material that makes street signs light up at night. It’s blinding to a driver when their headlights hit it.
Q: Won’t it get stolen?
A: Spend $100 on a serious U-lock, and not one of those cables that bolt cutters go through in a second. The main thing is to make your bike harder to steal than the one next to yours. Even a stolen bike every year leaves you thousands of dollars ahead of a car.
Q: Aren’t the batteries a fire hazard?
A: Nope. Uncertified batteries are, and they account for most of the fires in the news. Buy a bike with a UL-certified battery, use the charger it shipped with.
Q: How far does it go on a charge?
A: Depends on the bike. Some of these bikes advertise up to 50 miles or more depending on assist level and terrain. I charge mine once per week usually. It’s about as annoying as plugging in your phone. If the battery dies mid-ride, you still have a bicycle. A heavy one, but you can still pedal.
Q: Aren’t these things heavy?
A: Yes. Mine weighs about 80 pounds. You feel it when you carry it, not when you ride it. If you live up a flight of stairs, think about where you’ll park it, and if you want to take it on a road trip you’ll need a hitch rack rated for e-bikes, because trunk racks can’t take the weight. My Lectric XP4 folds, and I can fit it into the trunk of my tiny Kia Spectra hatchback.
Q: Do I need a license?
A: No.
Q: Can I haul groceries? Kids?
A: A rear rack can handle a grocery run. For kids or serious cargo, you can buy a cargo e-bike. Many different brands make cargo e-bikes with wide price ranges.
Q: Does it matter for the climate?
A: Lifecycle estimates put e-bikes around 25 g CO2 per passenger-kilometer versus roughly 240 g for cars, including manufacturing and charging. And those were European cars in that study, not your standard American gas-guzzling SUV. 10% the carbon footprint at worst.
Q: What should I buy?
A: Depends on your budget.
As much as I’d love to be that guy who insists you must only buy local, there’s a cost factor here. Direct-to-consumer (DTC) bikes are much cheaper. I own a Lectric XP4. I love it. As of 2026, their bikes start around $800. Aventon is another DTC brand and they sell some that start at $1,200.
Buying local in a retail store is going to be more expensive than DTC. At least where I live most e-bikes start at $2,000. But it comes with a huge advantage: a store to take it to when you run into trouble or need service.
That said, Lectric has been very good in terms of customer service with a few issues I had over the first year. They paid for service at a local bike shop when I had a motor issue. Other things I’ve learned to DIY. With a few tools and YouTube I was able to learn how to index my derailleur, change the brake pads and rotors, bleed the hydraulic lines and replace the fluid, fix a flat, and make other little adjustments.
Q: Should I buy used?
A: Carefully. The battery is the most expensive part of the bike and you can’t see its history (how many charge cycles it has, whether it spent two winters in an unheated shed, etc.). Used from a friend, or from a shop that’s inspected it, maybe. Test ride before you pay, and check the odometer if the display has one.
Q: But aren’t you privileged to live somewhere you can bike?
A: Yup. Real caveat here. All of this assumes you live somewhere you can bike. I live in the middle of Charlottesville, about half a mile from UVA, and my mortgage runs ~5-8x what I’d pay 2 miles outside town, where an interstate cuts off biking to anywhere useful. I bought my house 15 years ago, and I couldn’t afford to buy it today at current prices and rates. A bikeable address is a privilege, and on balance it costs more than living in the unbikeable burbs and driving into town. The car math above is real. I get that the housing math is too.
Q: What about the times you genuinely need a car?
A: Use one! I’m not telling you to sell your car; most people who get an e-bike end up replacing a second car, not going car-free. If you don’t own one, rent one or call one. A $30 Uber sounds expensive until you remember the car costs $965 a month whether you drive it or not. Give yourself a monthly rideshare-and-rental budget and spend it freely. You won’t come close to what the car costs.
One parting number: bank the difference between car and e-bike ownership, call it a conservative $6,000 a year, invest it at 7%, and after 30 years you’d have over half a million dollars. Mr. Money Mustache made this argument fifteen years ago and the arithmetic has only improved.